Friends, One never really knows, based on feedback, what the 'sense of an audience' is. Most feedback I get about our lists is positive, but that may simply mean that those who are unhappy don't want to get into an argument, and don't send in comments. (I'd hardly blame them.) In any case, I do get complaints from time to time, often attacking the credibility of postings. These may or may not be the tip of an iceberg of more widespread unhappiness. In any case, I'd like to clarify my posting policies. Each news source has its own publication policies. Some, like the New York Times, are known to print lies from time to time, in support of regime objectives. And yet for some kinds of news, the Times can be useful and reliable. For many other kinds of important news (such as DU poisoning), the Times is unlikely to provide any coverage at all (another kind of lying -- not telling the whole truth). The core mission of the Times, and similar mainstream sources, is to sell regime programs. In order to succeed in this mission, they lie about the big things that are difficult to verify, and tell the truth about the little things that are easy to verify. In this way many people are fooled into considering the sources reliable, making those people susceptible to the Big Lies when they come along (eg., 'WMDs', Iranian 'nuclear threat', 'Hezbollah started it'). In the case of 'alternative' media we see a wide range of editorial policies and objectives. Some are just as dishonest as the Times (but for their own purposes), some are sincere but unreliable, and some are both sincere and reliable. My judgement of reliability, by the way, is measured not by the authority of their sources, but by the quality their track record in breaking stories which are later verified, or contradicted, by additional evidence. In addition to this, I also adjust my 'reliability rating' by whether or not the piece seems likely to be true, based on my overall understanding of what's going on and who's doing what to whom these days. With the cyberjournal lists, I have my own editorial policies and objectives, as regards news stories. I often publish pieces (as from the Times) that I consider to be unreliable, in order to examine the spin and ferret out the hidden regime agenda motivating the story. When I publish pieces as 'real news', I use my 'reliability filter', as defined above, and which I think has worked rather effectively these many years. In any case, I can assure you that I am sincere and careful about what I post. If there are failings, they are of judgement not intention. My task is difficult because I am particularly interested in the most controversial stories. These are the stories at the 'leading edge' of important events and of propaganda spin. They are the stories where the truth is particularly difficult to determine, where evidence is being covered up, people are lying, and sincere sources have difficulty getting hard information from 'on the ground'. And yet, these are the most important stories, about events which are critically important to our futures. If we reserve giving serious attention to such stories (eg, 911) until 'all the facts are known' it will be too late to do us any good. I find the detective metaphor very useful in this regard. Suppose there is a serial killer on the loose, and there are only a few clues to go by. What kind of detective would say, "I'm going to sit in my office until more clues appear; no use chasing blind alleys." If the killer is to be stopped, the detective must take whatever clues she has, make guesses and inferences, build a theory of the case, and use it to seek out more clues. CSI explains this process very well. As regards news, I see my job as being just like the detective's. Big time serial killers are indeed on the loose (US, Britain, Israel, WTO, IMF) and we need to understand what they're up to as best we can. They control the media, which does all it can to distract and deceive, and so we must tap other sources as best we can. The media itself provides much of the information we need, both about basic raw events and, between the lines, about regime intentions. But if we want additional 'physical evidence' (on-the-ground information) we need to seek out sources like Dahr Jamail, who has access to evidence and a very good reliability record. In some cases an alarming blip shows up on my radar from a source of unknown reliability. It might signal nuclear war or it might only be a flight of geese. It might be an important and unique early warning, or it might be a false alarm. If the blip 'seems credible', based on overall considerations, then I think the right thing to do is share that blip with you, and let you judge for yourself. If it occasionally turns out to be a false alarm, we've wasted a few moments of our time. If it turns out to be an early warning, then it outweighs whatever time we've 'wasted' in this process. By paying attention to such blips early, we can 'tune our frequencies' to that thread and be better prepared to notice additional information, or lack thereof, in that part of the spectrum. rkm -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Blogs: cyberjournal forum http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/ Achieving real democracy http://harmonization.blogspot.com/ for readers of ETM http://matrixreaders.blogspot.com/ Community Empowerment http://empowermentinitiatives.blogspot.com/ Blogger made easy http://quaylargo.com/help/ezblogger.html
